The press has an obligation to closely follow the complaint against a journalist suspected of involvement in a criminal gang
Journalist Joo Messias Xavier was accused by authorities of participating in gangs fighting for control of criminal organizations in Rio de Janeiro. According to the complaint announced by justice officials, Messias sold information to the mafia that he collected as a journalist and wrote his stories in a way to damage a rival criminal organization.
Prosecutors sought the journalist’s arrest. Judicial officials did not cooperate, though they did authorize a warrant to search his home and seize evidence. Messias worked at the Globo TV Network. The network initially received the complaint cautiously and gave the employee time to defend himself but, afterward, following the revelation about the complaint and the evidence – recordings and photographs – against him, it decided to dismiss him, considering his behavior “incompatible with the ethical norms of the network.”
Before Globo, Messias worked three months at Folha. The newspaper reported on Dec. 19 that he produced, between June and October 2005, 52 stories and announced that it will review all the stories and will “make public corrections that are shown to be necessary.” The procedure was inspired by the example of the “New York Times” which acted the same way when it discovered that reporter Jason Blair invented stories in 2003.
Messias said he is innocent and denied, through Globo, that he received money from criminals. He said that he attempted to infiltrate the gang to write a book about the warring criminal gangs. Concerning the journalist’s involvement, here are some considerations.
1 – I felt obligated to call attention to the case, but I still don’t feel confident of reaching a conclusion. To be coherent with what I have defended in other columns, I believe it is premature to reach any conclusion about the guilt of the journalist. We are tired of hearing accusations, including those by prosecutors, that evaporate later. The accusation is serious, but it is necessary to wait for the process to unfold.
2 – The defense of Messias tried to free him from the accusation of joining a gang, but it exposes another serious ethical problem: can journalists infiltrate criminal organizations to obtain information? In my opinion, it is indefensible behavior.
3 – It is a positive initiative for Folha to investigate the journalist’s work during the period he worked for the newspaper. Whatever it is, the conclusion should be provided to readers.
4 – The press has an obligation to follow the case closely: whether for its relevance or the fact that it involves a journalist. The partial result of the recent operations by federal police in Rio prove the association of police with organized crime. No charges have been filed yet against the journalist.
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EVALUATION
Political journalism
The year that is ending was a trial by fire for political journalism. The model for coverage focused almost exclusively on Braslia and the political parties and no longer counts on flexibility of phenomena that we watched. The case of newspapers is even more fragile because they are going through a phase of tough questioning and pressure provoked by the expansion of the Internet and by the multiplication of news blogs and networks of commentary and criticism.
Over the past six and a half years political scientist Fernando Luiz Abrucio wrote a weekly column in “Valor” newspaper, where he showed himself to be an astute observer of the political scene and journalistic coverage. He ended his contribution on Dec. 11. I asked for an analysis of the political journalism that we practice.
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“Political coverage by the big newspapers still have their priority focus on chatter by politicians. Coverage, meanwhile, is mostly declaratory, concentrated on what happens in the halls of Congress and the most politicized parts of the executive branch. This aspect is important but is overvalued for a vision that is little analytical of the facts, only appearing, at times, in weekend editions.
“Basically, there are three things missing from Brazilian political journalism. The first is a lack of political memory, capable of illuminating current coverage. Without this historical understanding, the facts tend to be analyzed by merely conjectural criteria. When it is said that the administration of President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva is ‘the most corrupt’ in history and does not utilize any comparative criteria to sustain such an evaluation, which is improper. It is necessary to have political journalists such as Paulo Vinicius Coelho (of ESPN) in soccer, which systemizes the details of the past to better understand the present.
“Another hole deals with the lack of preoccupation and preparation to evaluate public policy. Aside from rare exceptions, particularly in special sparse special coverage, political journalism has not evaluated the quality of the government proposals and their implementation, such as alternatives raised by the opposition. They lack journalists with knowledge about diverse areas of government and intentions to substitute this lack of knowledge by the exposure of ‘diverse sides,’ something essential, that is not enough to inform readers well.
“Finally, political coverage needs to go beyond the ‘political corridors of Braslia.’ They need to analyze more regularly legitimate electoral sources who are far from the halls of power. Furthermore, it would be worth it to better articulate the part of the policy with cities or with international coverage. But journalism today is very segmented, which interferes with the quality of information.
“It is precisely the Brazilian environment that misses more stories than it follows, with numbers, the work of congressional commissions, judicial decisions, and progress of government programs. If you could summarize it in one phrase, you would say that political journalism has a wider and more systematic vision of the facts. And this role should never be filled only by columnists. The story should outline something besides opinion and political infighting.”
The press on the press
The inexplicable
Try to explain to a foreigner who knows nothing about Brazil what the Pimenta Neves case is about. I could not do that because it is inexplicable that a man who killed a woman 30 years younger, in a premeditated way, in a shameful way, the defendant confessed, was convicted by a trial by jury, and six years later he remains free.
-Mriam Leito, journalist (“O Globo,” Dec. 19, 2006)
Translation by John Wright
